The Enablers: A New Report About Washington Influence Peddling

Maybe not illegal, but definitely a bad look

Happy September! I hope everyone is enjoying all the pumpkin spice products that are out on the shelves now, even though it remains hotter than hell in most places. For those of us who don’t live in the US: are the Halloween decorations up yet?

Rant! took August off, but that doesn't mean I was idle. I talked to the Deep State Radio podcast about Russia, yachts, and Metallica. For those of you who only listen to the audio (and don’t watch the video), imagine me with big hair and lots of spikes. I’m a total Metallica fan.*

I also spent a few days in New York, where I spoke at the New York Police Department’s Cyber Intelligence and Counterterrorism conference. I was thrilled to be part of a panel on disinformation and conspiracy theories with Mike Rothschild, whose new book, “Jewish Space Lasers”, is out this month. Check it out, because he is very funny and informative. Unfortunately, the panel was not recorded, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that we were a smashing success.

NYPD also asked me to give a solo presentation on Russian oligarch yachts. “Yacht Talk with Alex Finley” was a huge hit, despite the fact that they put me on after a presentation about mass shootings. (Fun fact: this is the second conference that put me on stage for a lighthearted presentation after a presentation on mass shootings.)

All this to say, I am available for talks or lectures! Particularly if you find yourself in the awkward position of having to lighten up the mood after a discussion on mass shootings.

My Foreign Influence Operations course remains up. I will no longer be posting a class every other week, but I will continue to write relevant analyses and essays related to foreign influence operations for paid subscribers. Also for paid subscribers:

VESPERS! Let’s welcome Fall together on September 21 at noon eastern time (18:00 Europe). We’ve got so much to catch up on! Indictments, spies, a murder, and more! Don’t miss it!

*Not actually true.

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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT

This week, Politico reported that former senior CIA officer Daniel Hoffman worked to try to keep a Russian oligarch off the US sanctions list. Politico called it a story of “classic Washington influence peddling.”

And how awesome is it that this one involves a former CIA officer, one who reportedly served as chief of station Moscow?

Here’s the background:

When Washington began discussing sanctions on Russian oligarchs shortly before Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Russian oligarch Petr Aven and his oligarch buddy Mikhail Fridman started calling all their friends in high places in an effort to keep themselves off the sanctions list. Or, more specifically, they used a Washington lobbying firm hired through their investment company to call high-level people in Washington to keep them off the sanctions list.

And it worked, for a time at least. Their luck ran out only last month, when both were finally sanctioned. But for a year and a half, they remained off the US sanctions list (and, I’m guessing, likely used that time to restructure their assets).

One of Aven’s Washington advocates, Politico reports, was Hoffman, a former Moscow station chief for CIA.

According to Politico, Hoffman, a member of the lobbying company’s advisory board, met with staffers on Capitol Hill under the guise of discussing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But then he pivoted.

At the meeting, Hoffman established his authority as an expert on Russia. He emphasized the importance of supporting Ukraine. But into the meeting, he segued to the Putin Accountability Act, according to one of the attendees. Hoffman stressed that people who pitch ideas to Congress can’t be trusted, and questioned where the list of potential sanctions targets came from. Specifically, Hoffman wanted to know if anyone had asked to put Aven on the list, according to one of the Hill staffers.

Hoffman argued that Aven was not an ally of Putin — in fact, he said, sanctioning Aven would only strengthen the Russian president — and suggested that those attempting to punish Aven were connected to the Steele dossier, according to one of the Hill staffers.

Remember the Steele dossier? You’d be forgiven if you didn’t; there’s been so much disinformation and bad reporting about it I honestly wish I didn’t remember the Steele dossier. Anyway, without getting too in the weeds on that convoluted story, it is important to know here that Aven and Fridman sued the firm behind the dossier. And this Politico report makes it seem that Hoffman was suggesting that someone connected to that whole insane episode had fed bad information about Aven to Capitol Hill staffers, that maybe someone was trying to get revenge on Aven for suing the folks behind the dossier.

But Aven and Fridman dropped that lawsuit against the firm around the same time Hoffman and others from the lobbying group were trying to keep Aven off the sanctions list, which seems like an odd step if you think the firm is actively trying to punish you by getting you put on a sanctions list.

Who is Petr Aven?

Aven was an economist back in Soviet times, and when the USSR fell, he worked closely with the then-deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to reshape the economy. When Putin later landed himself in the Kremlin, Aven suggested Putin should rule like Pinochet, according to Catherine Belton’s book Putin’s People. This likely was more a reference to economic liberalization policies, but you know, Pinochet is also remembered for some other things.

Aven went on to run Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank, as well as other businesses in the Alfa group, amassing a fortune of around $4 billion. (Oddly, he does not seem to own a yacht.)

So, is Aven an ally of Putin or not?

Well, the European Union thinks he is. In sanctioning him, they called him “one of Vladimir Putin’s closest oligarchs.” The United Kingdom said he is a “pro-Kremlin oligarch.”

It’s just business.

But until he was sanctioned by the US last month, Aven was chilling in his house in the Hamptons in New York, thanks to his US visa. This, despite the fact that he had been one of the oligarchs summoned back to Moscow as the invasion began, and despite the fact that Aven had admitted to the US government that he met quarterly with Putin and understood that he (Aven) had to execute Putin’s directives or face consequences.

When interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as part of Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, here’s what Aven had to say:

Aven told the Office that he is one of approximately 50 wealthy Russian businessmen who regularly meet with Putin in the Kremlin; these 50 men are often referred to as “oligarchs.”977 Aven told the Office that he met on a quarterly basis with Putin, including in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2016, shortly after the U.S. presidential election.978 Aven said that he took these meetings seriously and understood that any suggestions or critiques that Putin made during these meetings were implicit directives, and that there would be consequences for Aven if he did not follow through.979 As was typical, the 2016 Q4 meeting with Putin was preceded by a preparatory meeting with Putin’s chief of staff, Anton Vaino.980

According to Aven, at his Q4 2016 one-on-one meeting with Putin,981 Putin raised the prospect that the United States would impose additional sanctions on Russian interests, including sanctions against Aven and/or Alfa-Bank.982 Putin suggested that Aven needed to take steps to protect himself and Alfa-Bank.983

Jeez, even Putin thought Aven should be sanctioned.

Anyway, why did Putin want to protect Alfa Bank?

Well, according to Proekt, a Russian independent investigative outlet, Alfa Bank was helping to feed the Russian war machine. As the Washington Post summed up Proekt’s reporting on Alfa Bank’s role in the war:

The report cited Russian government contracts as showing that Alfa-Bank had provided loans to a slew of Russian defense enterprises, including a major bullet producer in Tula at the height of the war last year, and currently has credit lines extended to the Uralsky Optiko-Mekhanichesky plant, an optical-systems maker for Russian bombers, and to raw-materials suppliers for nuclear weapon and missile producers.

Proekt also cited government contracts as showing that AlfaStrakhovanie, the billionaires’ insurance group, had provided insurance for military units active in the war in Ukraine, as well as for more than a dozen Russian defense manufacturers, including the Kalashnikov machine gun producer.

But he’s not a bad guy, honest!

Last year, Aven did an an interview with the Financial Times, seemingly designed to win him sympathy after the UK sanctioned him. “Our business is completely destroyed,” he said. “Everything which we were building for 30 years is now completely ruined. And we have to somehow start a new life.”

But then he said this: “‘Will l be allowed to have a cleaner, or a driver?”

Seriously, sanction this guy more.

Aven then expressed compassion for Ukraine while explaining it’s not personal, it’s just business.

He rejects the claim that he is close to Putin’s Kremlin, arguing that to do business in Russia requires contact with the president and that when his office calls then there is little choice but to respond. “That’s very strange, just to be sanctioned because you meet the president. We try to be absolutely out of politics. With Putin I was presenting Alfa Group, not myself at all.”

Which isn’t exactly what he told Mueller, and of course isn’t how it works in Russia, where oligarch businesses are basically an extension of the mafia state. (For a deeper understanding of how this works, check out my Foreign Influence Operations course.)

The Enablers

So, why was Hoffman, the former CIA officer, helping this guy? He hasn’t offered a public response to the Politico report. But I couldn’t help but be reminded of the case of Charles McGonigal, whom I wrote about in my very first Rant! McGonigal used to be the head of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York office. He pleaded guilty in August to helping a different oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, evade sanctions.

Unlike the McGonigal case, nobody is claiming that Hoffman broke any laws in trying to convince Capitol Hill staffers to keep Aven off the sanctions list. But still, it’s not a great look.

These two cases acutely demonstrate how Russian oligarchs co-opt individuals in their (the oligarchs') corruption. Deripaska has managed to get both an American presidential campaign manager (Paul Manafort) and a high-level FBI agent (one who was in charge of counterintelligence, no less!) to serve as his messengers in the US. And Aven, it seems, got a former high-level CIA officer with extensive Russia experience to be his advocate. It’s a massive coup for the oligarchs.

Public servants used to be the type of people we were taught we should have respect for and look up to, people who fought corruption, not participated in it.

It is sad on an individual level, but also a societal one. One of the consequences is that we begin to lose faith in our institutions. If the former head of FBI counterintelligence who worked on Russia issues and should know better, is himself corrupted by Russia, why should Americans have any faith in their public servants? Cases like these serve to lower public trust in government institutions, which in turn hurts democratic efforts and aids the slide toward authoritarianism.

Derispaska and Aven--and all the other oligarchs, too--will continue to try to buy advocates in West, and greed ensures their efforts will continue to work with certain individuals. It should serve as a reminder that corruption is a threat to democracies and we need to reconcile our own participation in such practices, legal or not. 

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THE WEEK’S LINKS

A roundup of stories you should be reading

RUSSIA

Cuba exposes Russian human trafficking ring for military recruitment (Politico)

Kim Jong-un and Putin Plan to Meet in in Russia to Discuss Weapons (NYT)

Russia Raises Interest Rates to 12% After Ruble Plummets (The Moscow Times)

China is redefining its borders with its neighbors, including Russia (Le Monde) (Alex side note: How bad are things if you’re turning to Cuba for fighters and North Korea for weapons? And all the while, the ruble is plummeting and China is quietly taking your land.)

Wagner Group tell fighters to seek other employment (Meduza) (Alex side note: like what other work? Sledgehammer wielder? Murderer? Cheese soufflé maker?)

UNITED STATES

A New Rudy Scandal: FBI Agent Says Giuliani Was Co-Opted by Russian Intelligence (Mother Jones)

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Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?

Look at that beautiful smile! I look pretty happy, too.